How to roll out a cylinder seal

As I had mentioned previously, this last season, a very nice Late Bronze Age cylinder seal was discovered in Area E.

See me demonstrating how to roll it out on clay, in this short clip (shot by Amit) below:

Aren

P.S. And just in case you should ever have a cylinder seal in your hand and want to roll it out on clay, to insure that the clay does not stick to the seal after the seal is rolled over the clay (and it is then rather hard to clean the clay from within the incised patterns on the seal), spread some talcum powder on the clay surface before rolling. Tricks of the trade… :-)

Of course they did not use talcum powder – and I don’t know if they used something equivalent (flour) – I was just speaking from present experience. But as our forefathers were quite clever – they may have used a similar solution as well.